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JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

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Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#101

Post by igor_akhmetov »

donmcronald wrote: post #90
igor_akhmetov wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of text and it's still not clear what you're trying to say. Just disable the plugin if you don't need it or don't find it useful?

I shouldn't need to disable a plugin like that. In my opinion, it's something that I should need to explicitly enable if I want it. All it takes is one person on a project accepting the prompts to agree to the ToS for everyone. They know it's problem too because commercial accounts can disable the integration for everyone. And most of what I said was relating to the direction Jetbrains is moving. As soon as they star…

Thanks!

I guess the main reason the plugin is enabled by default is to promote it. AI tools are becoming an important part of the development workflow, with a majority of developers using a chat LLM or Copilot (https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2023/ai/). So the functionality offered by the plugin might be interesting to a large part of the user base. A non-bundled plugin would not be discovered by most users. And for organizations it looks like the AI assistant is disabled by default.

Regarding the direction - LLMs are usually used as a service right now, so there's not much choice. At the same time, JetBrains is also working on local smart completion workflows like https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/14823-full-line-code-co.... Hopefully at some point there'll also be an option to use a local LLM with the AI Assistant.

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#102

Post by insanitybit »

Shawnecy wrote: post #100
insanitybit wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep linking this over and over again and you clearly don't understand what you've linked. The plugin isn't even activated by default, you have to explicitly do so. IT's enabled , meaning the plugin can run, but it doesn't do anything related to AI unless you press the "free trial" or activation buttons.

WRONG. You say that, but read the details and the original thread from what it was cut: "but the bundled older version remains enabled after IDE restart." THE OLD VERSION IS ENABLED AFTER IDE RESTART.

I don't know what you're going on about. I'll make this as clear as possible:

1. The enabled plugin prompts you to 'activate' the service

2. If you do not activate the service the plugin is enabled but does not use the service

3. There is a minor bug, allegedly (have not reproduced it, and others have tried and failed) where the plugin can be disabled and then it re-enables itself.

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#103

Post by igor_akhmetov »

Shawnecy wrote: post #100
insanitybit wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep linking this over and over again and you clearly don't understand what you've linked. The plugin isn't even activated by default, you have to explicitly do so. IT's enabled , meaning the plugin can run, but it doesn't do anything related to AI unless you press the "free trial" or activation buttons.

WRONG. You say that, but read the details and the original thread from what it was cut: "but the bundled older version remains enabled after IDE restart." THE OLD VERSION IS ENABLED AFTER IDE RESTART.

Please finally read the issue you linked. This happens when you disable the plugin and immediately uninstall a plugin update. If you just disable the plugin it stays disabled.

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#104

Post by tharmas »

echelon wrote: post #44
trmpakufnfee wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what every company is doing in the name of integrating "Gen AI". 90% of it is chat bots. And in 90% of those places I dont want a chat bot.

This is a cynical take. JetBrains knows what's best for its business. It knows that Microsoft presents a clear and present danger to extincting them and all of their hard work. LLMs have a huge role in the future of engineering, whether or not you like it. They present massive productivity boosts. I'm a senior Rust engineer and I've seen my development time nearly cut in half after using LLMs. And we're just getting…

Death. They just killed trust in their products. Code Security. Code Copyright. It was the manner in how they implemented it.

"We also sign contracts / agreement to do the work. Some of the clauses in those contracts (at least mine) are very strict describing who can have access to the code/data and what level of access and in which region(s). At this moment I am uncertain about it myself which potentially makes me the party that is breaking the terms of the contract. For example, I have no answer to the question "is it possible that some code/data has been seen by government sponsored actors in USA or Russia?" - I have no answer to that."

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#105

Post by donmcronald »

insanitybit wrote: post #91
donmcronald wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it comes down to expectations being betrayed, even if the expectations aren't correct. For me, I pay Jetbrains every year because I want a fully local IDE. I absolutely do NOT want any kind of cloud integration because that means my workflow becomes dependent on Jetbrains or whatever third party is powering the integration. At that point, all of the value of Jetbrains is gone, at least for me, and I could use…

> I absolutely do NOT want any kind of cloud integration because that means my workflow becomes dependent on Jetbrains or whatever third party is powering the integration. Nothing has changed. The plugin is enabled by default but it does nothing unless activated. "Enabled" doesn't mean it's doing anything. > Again, I'm paying to NOT have that. So don't. >So my hunch is that people finding it useful are probably below…

> Nothing has changed. The plugin is enabled by default but it does nothing unless activated. "Enabled" doesn't mean it's doing anything.

I'm not talking about this feature exclusively. This is a good integration for them to justify charging extra and to justify a dependence on a third party service that you can't host locally.

If this is viewed as a success for them, there's a lot of incentive for the next feature to be a service based cloud integration. And the next and the next... Suddenly we'll be 5 years into the future and development workflows will be completely dependent on cloud integrations and, as developers, we'll be subjected to terms and conditions that are detrimental to us because we don't have any other options.

Look at how Microsoft is moving Office into the cloud. When you try to open a document everything defaults to getting you to interact with, and rely on, OneDrive. Most of the collaborative features already rely on OneDrive. Once they've discontinued perpetual licenses and everything is subscription based, they'll probably make it even harder to rely on plain old documents on the local file system.

Who do you think that benefits more, you or Microsoft? Where's your leverage when Microsoft says prices are going up? You don't have any because your day-to-day workflow has become dependent on their services. What happens if they ban you? Can you do any work tomorrow?

What I'm saying is the reason I pay Jetbrains is because, in my mind, I'm paying for a product that isn't going to get developed to eventually detriment my interests for the benefit of Jetbrains.

What do you think the long term goal of VSCode is? I think it's to get as many developers as possible to depend on it for their workflow so Microsoft can slowly shift more and more functionality to cloud connected services with the end goal of having everyone pay to have their development environments dependent on premium, for-pay Microsoft services with everything, including your development environment, running on Azure.

Every time something shifts to benefit large corporations at the expense of users there are always people like you in the comments that can't see the downsides if a critical mass of users accept the changes.

> Nothing has changed.

Except Jetbrains is about to get their first taste of what it's like to have some of their customers dependent on a feature that isn't available locally. If it's seen as a financial success, do you think they'll be able to resist the temptation to start moving everything they can to cloud connected features?

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#106

Post by dragonwriter »

StreetChief wrote: post #9
trmpakufnfee wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what every company is doing in the name of integrating "Gen AI". 90% of it is chat bots. And in 90% of those places I dont want a chat bot.

Like the grocery store chat bot that recommended mixing bleach and ammonia for a "fresh scent!"

When specifically prompted to do something involving mixing bleach and ammonia.

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#107

Post by donmcronald »

igor_akhmetov wrote: post #101
donmcronald wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I shouldn't need to disable a plugin like that. In my opinion, it's something that I should need to explicitly enable if I want it. All it takes is one person on a project accepting the prompts to agree to the ToS for everyone. They know it's problem too because commercial accounts can disable the integration for everyone. And most of what I said was relating to the direction Jetbrains is moving. As soon as they star…

Thanks! I guess the main reason the plugin is enabled by default is to promote it. AI tools are becoming an important part of the development workflow, with a majority of developers using a chat LLM or Copilot ( https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2023/ai/ ). So the functionality offered by the plugin might be interesting to a large part of the user base. A non-bundled plugin would not be discovered by most use…

They call it a plugin, but it's an ad. It wouldn't be any different if they put an ad in the IDE and installed the plugin when you sign up.

> Hopefully at some point there'll also be an option to use a local LLM with the AI Assistant.

I would love something where I could pick the inputs or at least give it inputs that skew results. Right now I think the big problem with AI is bad input. Most of the dataset that's publicly available is junk. A lot of "answers" are people guessing at stuff they don't understand.

Honestly, I don't even know if (or how) LLMs work if you train them with a smaller, more accurate dataset.

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#108

Post by insanitybit »

donmcronald wrote: post #105
insanitybit wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I absolutely do NOT want any kind of cloud integration because that means my workflow becomes dependent on Jetbrains or whatever third party is powering the integration. Nothing has changed. The plugin is enabled by default but it does nothing unless activated. "Enabled" doesn't mean it's doing anything. > Again, I'm paying to NOT have that. So don't. >So my hunch is that people finding it useful are probably below…

> Nothing has changed. The plugin is enabled by default but it does nothing unless activated. "Enabled" doesn't mean it's doing anything. I'm not talking about this feature exclusively. This is a good integration for them to justify charging extra and to justify a dependence on a third party service that you can't host locally. If this is viewed as a success for them, there's a lot of incentive for the next feature t…

> I'm not talking about this feature exclusively.

Well that's weird because:

a) Everyone else is

b) You definitely seem to be talking about it and specifically have targeted your comment to this feature in the comments section about this feature

So it feels a bit weird to now say "it's not about this feature"...

> there's a lot of incentive f

We can sum up virtually all of your post as "something in the future could be bad". OK, yes, something in the future could be bad. That is always true.

> large corporations

JetBrains isn't even VC funded, they're a privately owned and profitable company. Comparing them to Microsoft without addressing this feels disengenous.

> an't see the downsides if a critical mass of users accept the changes.

I mean, I think it's ridiculous to go "look at how JetBrains is changing" in a thread where everyone has misunderstood a minor bug that in no way indicates that JetBrains is changing. They're adding services, wow how awful.

> Except Jetbrains is about to get their first taste of what it's like to have some of their customers dependent on a feature that isn't available locally.

No one depends on this. Your IDE starts up fine without it. You don't need it. You can use a competing plugin (they already exist) that runs locally or in some other service.

> If it's seen as a financial success, do you think they'll be able to resist the temptation to start moving everything they can to cloud connected features?

I think it would be a ridiculous move for them to completely change their core business model to be exclusively service oriented, yes.

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#109

Post by genmud »

joshstrange wrote: post #67
genmud wrote: post #63

I finally cancelled my subscription for their ultimate package as it just kept going up and up in price. They used to be really good for having 3 year discounts, and paying $80 or $100 for a fairly good ide wasn't the end of the world, but VSCode has gotten really good and paying like 160/180/200 a year out of pocket just doesn't make sense to me.

Ultimate is $101/yr (year 3+). I can think of very few things that provide even a fraction of the value at that low of a cost. And no, I don't see VSCode as equivalent to IDEA Ultimate, not in the slightest. Maybe with many, many hours of config I could get it close but even then VSCode plugins are so painful to manage and configure (and make sure they don't step on each other's feet).

I had the all products pack, so I guess it wasn't just ultimate. Between 2019 and 2022 it went from $89 to $149 + tax, so 160/year. I did not receive a 67% increase in value during that time.

I used to have the same view about idea vs vscode, but the MS provided plugins are solid these days and some of the other ones that are community are equally rock solid.

Things where IntelliJ used to just beat the crap out of code, like managing development environments or debugging are now either on par or better than IntelliJ. I even have it setup for remote debugging and serial debugging embedded devices.

Re: JetBrains forces AI freemium plugin that cannot be completely removed into IDEs

#110

Post by genmud »

NAHWheatCracker wrote: post #68
genmud wrote: post #63

I finally cancelled my subscription for their ultimate package as it just kept going up and up in price. They used to be really good for having 3 year discounts, and paying $80 or $100 for a fairly good ide wasn't the end of the world, but VSCode has gotten really good and paying like 160/180/200 a year out of pocket just doesn't make sense to me.

My most recent invoice from Jetbrains was $109. In the previous 4 years, it was $96. I have the 40% continuity discount since I first purchased a license in 2015. I have the "IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate" license, FWIW. I don't see myself switching to another IDE. $109 is a drop in the bucket. I also use VSCode, mostly for non-code text editing. Relearning and configuring keybinds would be enough to keep me on Jetbrains un…

I mentioned in another comment I must have been mistaken, I had the all products pack. I went from $89/year in 2019 to $149/year in 2022 which was a 67% price hike.
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